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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
Provides cross-disciplinary perspectives on the study of animals in
humanitiesThis volume critically investigates current topics and
disciplines that are affected, enriched or put into dispute by the
burgeoning scholarship on Animal Studies. What new questions and
modes of research need come into play if we are to seriously
acknowledge our entanglements with other animals? World-leading
scholars from a range of disciplines, including Literature,
Philosophy, Art, Biosemiotics, and Geography, set the agenda for
Animal Studies today. Rather than a narrow specialism, the 35 newly
commissioned essays in this book show how we think of other animals
to be intrinsic to fields as major as ethics, economies as
widespread as capitalism and relations as common as friendship.The
volume contains original, cutting-edge research and opens up new
methods, alignments, directions as well as challenges for the
future of Animal Studies. Uniquely, the chapters each focus on a
single topic, from 'Abjection' to 'Voice' and from 'Affection' to
'Technology', thus embedding the animal question as central to
contemporary concerns across a wide range of disciplines.Key
FeaturesProvides in one work prominent scholars in animal studies
and their reflections on the trajectory of the fieldEmbeds the
'animal question' as central to contemporary concerns across a wide
range of disciplinesBrings discourses from the sciences into
dialogue with the arts and humanitiesOpens up new methods,
alignments, directions and challenges for the future of animal
studiesAfterword from Cary Wolfe (Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie
Professor of English, Rice University)
To what extent, and in what manner, do storytelling practices
accomodate nonhuman subjects and their modalities of experience,
and how can contemporary narrative study shed light on interspecies
interactions and entanglements? In Narratology beyond the Human,
David Herman addresses these questions through a cross-disciplinary
approach to post-Darwinian narratives concerned with animals and
human-animal relationships. Herman considers the enabling and
constraining effects of different narrative media, examining a
range of fictional and nonfictional texts disseminated in print,
comics and graphic novels, and film. In focusing on techniques such
as the use of animal narrators, alternation between human and
nonhuman perspectives, the embedding of stories within stories, and
others, the book explores how specific strategies for portraying
nonhuman agents both emerge from and contributes to broader
attitudes toward animal life. Herman argues that existing
frameworks for narrative inquiry must be modified to take into
account how stories are interwoven with cultural ontologies, or
understandings of what sorts of beings populate the world and how
they relate to humans. Showing how questions of narrative bear on
ideas of species difference and assumptions about animal minds,
Narratology beyond the Human underscores our inextricable
interconnectedness with other forms of creatural life and suggests
that stories can be used to resituate imaginaries of human action
in a more-than-human world.
HISTORIES OF HUMAN CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATURE Wild Things: Nature and
the Social Imagination assembles eleven substantive and original
essays on the cultural and social dimensions of environmental
history. They address a global cornucopia of social and ecological
systems, from Africa to Europe, North America and the Caribbean,
and their temporal range extends from the 1830s into the
twenty-first century. The imaginative (and actual) construction of
landscapes and the appropriation of Nature - through
image-fashioning, curating museum and zoo collections, making
'friends', 'enemies' and mythical symbols from animals - are
recurring subjects. Among the volume's thought-provoking essays are
a group enmeshing nature and the visual culture of photography and
film. Canonical environmental history themes, from colonialism to
conservation, are re-inflected by discourses including gender
studies, Romanticism, politics and technology. The loci of the
studies included here represent both the microcosmic - underwater
laboratory, zoo, film studio; and broad canvases - the German
forest, the Rocky Mountains, the islands of Haiti and Madagascar.
Their casts too are richly varied - from Britain's otters and
Africa's Nile crocodiles to Hollywood film-makers and South African
cattle. The volume represents an excitingly diverse collection of
studies of how humans, in imagination and deed, act on and are
acted on by 'wild things'.
Now in paperback! Follow Rabbit as she learns how important it is
to say sorry. At Rainbow Island Harbour, some new visitors have
arrived, including Little Peacock. The other animals are excited to
meet him but Rabbit is worried that her friends will be more
interested in the newcomer than in their old friend Rabbit. Rabbit
tells Little Peacock he's not welcome to play with the other
animals but when Peacock disappears, will Rabbit admit what she's
done? And will she be able to find Peacock and apologise for her
mistake? Children will love the myriad of animal characters and
learning and understanding the different ways we can be kind to one
another. There are lots of extra learning opportunities, from
questions about the story to activities showing you how to make
your own Kindness Badge to notes for parents and carers to extend
learning and reinforce positive behaviour. In the words of Badger,
who runs the Kindness Club, "When you show kindness, it makes you
and your friends feel good."
At present, human beings worldwide are using an estimated 115.3
million animals in experiments-a normalization of the unthinkable
on an immense scale. In terms of harm, pain, suffering, and death,
animal experiments constitute one of the major moral issues of our
time. Given today's deeper understanding of animal sentience, the
contributors to this volume argue that we must afford animals a
special moral consideration that precludes their use in
experiments. The Ethical Case against Animal Experiments begins
with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics's groundbreaking and
comprehensive ethical critique of the practice of animal
experiments. A second section offers original writings that engage
with, and elaborate on, aspects of the Oxford Centre report. The
essayists explore historical, philosophical, and personal
perspectives that range from animal experiments in classical times
to the place of necessity in animal research to one researcher's
painful journey from researcher to opponent. A devastating look at
a contemporary moral crisis, The Ethical Case against Animal
Experiments melds logic and compassion to mount a powerful
challenge to human cruelty.
This book is the first of its kind to identify the existential crisis faced by vegans.
Vystopia is the normal response any feeling human being should have after discovering the nature and extent of society's systematised animal abuse. It's fuelled by the trance-like collusion of non-vegans with a dystopian world they've not yet realised they're part of.
Bestselling author Clare Mann, a vegan psychologist, communications trainer and existential psychotherapist, not only validates the vegan's experience, but rejects medical labels which claim such anguish is abnormal.
As a telling witness to vystopia - a term she coined in 2017 - she provides vegans with a language and toolbox to work through their anguish, and unite with others to examine the biggest social justice challenge of our time: our relationship with the animal kingdom.
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